In 2001, a group of Pakistani and Indian teenagers met in the beautiful setting of Otisfield, Maine. In addition to the conventional sporting, cultural and traditional exchange, we stumbled upon the subject of our shared past. From a shared culture to religious differences, a collaborative freedom struggle to alleged deception, the two-nation theory to nostalgia for a united India – we uncovered a plethora of deep rooted sentiments as emotions flared threatening to engulf the friendships we had developed.

Once the thickness of the air dissipated, we returned to the dialogue room determined to bring tolerance, respect and the will to listen, if not agree (offerings that we had earlier demanded but forgot to offer). We traced the roots of such hatred to history textbooks which epitomized indoctrination of stereotypes in the minds of millions of youth across India and Pakistan in a continuous cycle.

As we worked through the difficult hours listening to accounts antithetic to some of our deepest rooted beliefs, we stumbled across the subjectivity of reality itself, the bias within narration viz a viz the human side of history. We discovered that the arguments and sources supporting their accounts were as strong as ours, if not stronger. We walked away confused yet more empowered; less informed yet perhaps, with much more knowledge. But most importantly, we discovered that people laden as enemies in our minds without us ever having met them can be as good friends (or enemies) as anyone back home.

The experience begot the obvious next question. How do you scale such an empowering experience? There is probably no single all-encompassing answer to this massive question but The History Project would hopefully serve as one of the answers.

After dozens of months of debates and consultations on how to synergize the contrasting versions of our shared past and the best way to present it, we decided to keep our individual perspectives at bay and juxtapose unadulterated versions of history being taught in text books on either side of the border. We collated versions from history text books and put differing versions side by side, in an attempt to highlight the reality of an alternative perspective with equally convincing foundations. Additionally, we stumbled across events that highlighted the variable significance of incidents with respect to the viewer’s lens. While certain events constitute th